Testing Social-Demographic and Social-Psychological Models of Fear of Crime in Slovenia (From Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Dilemmas of Contemporary Criminal Justice, P 642-655, 2004, Gorazd Mesko, et al., eds. -- See NCJ-207973)

• NCJ Number: 208028
• Author(s): Gorazd Mesko; Igor Areh; Helmut Kury
• Date Published: September 2004
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: Slovenia

Annotation

Following an explanation of the social-psychological model of fear of crime proposed by Van der Wurff et al., this paper reviews the methodologies and findings of surveys that have tested the model, including one conducted in Slovenia.

Abstract

The social-psychological model of the fear of crime was originally proposed and tested by Van der Wurff et al. (1989) using data collected in the Netherlands. The model links the fear of crime with four social psychological components: "attractivity," which refers to the extent to which people view themselves or their possessions as an attractive target for a criminal; "evil intent," which refers to the extent to which a person attributes criminal intentions to another individual or particular group; "power," which refers to the degree of self-assurance and feeling of control that a person has regarding possible threat or assault; and "criminalizable space," which refers to the extent to which a situation lends itself to criminal activities in the view of a possible victim. Other than the Netherlands survey, this paper considers surveys conducted in Scotland and Slovenia. All of the surveys revealed that fear of crime is related to a person's perception of himself/herself as being vulnerable to an attacker outside of one's home. Perceiving oneself as being physically stronger than the imagined potential offender reduces fear; whereas, perceiving oneself as weaker than the imagined potential attacker is linked to increased fear of crime. Not all of the components of the social-psychological model were equally influential in generating fear of crime. The "evil intentions" component, for example, had little part in stimulating the fear of crime. This paper suggests that future crime surveys should focus more on what people specifically fear happening to them and why they believe that the likelihood of it occurring is so great that they have a conscious fear of it happening. 6 tables, 24 references, and appended description of the vignettes used in the survey